Well would you believe it, Uncle Ridgy has saved my arse.

Unusually for me, when I was out seeing a band the other night, I didn't get even slightly trollied, as I have had a voice of doom in my head saying 'drunken things only happen to drunken people' ever since Uncle Ridgy shared those words of wisdom and raised the axe. So when I was chatted up by the MOST GORGEOUS (and quite possibly blind) 24 year old, I had absolutely no trouble refusing to snog his face off. Well, not much. I did consider it for a couple of seconds, but I'm a married woman. He was nevertheless a very entertaining way to spend an evening.

On the way home, boy, did I regret it. I was telling Lois I really wished I'd been drunk so some drunken thing could have happened to me. But nothing had, so there was nothing to hide from Husband, and I told him the whole story, as I was, I must admit, pretty damn pleased with myself. TWENTY-FOUR! GORGEOUS! (even if visually impaired or mentally deranged)

Then last night Husband was out with his mates, and it only turns out that most of them were at the pub that night and had some strange kind of spy-ring thing going on. Thank goodness they were able to confirm that all had been above board. EWWWW! Narrow escape or what?

But does this mean that alcohol enables me to do things I want to but am too uptight to do without a drink; or does it mean that being sober enables me to make the right choices? I am only glad I didn't snog Gorgeous Boy because I would have been caught.

Oh dear, I still have a long way to go on the moral highway......

Steven
30th April 1950 - 21st December 2005

In case I'm not about, Merry Christmas everyone. Here is a picture of me doing an unfortunate impression of Fern Britton.

(Put the axe down, Uncle Ridgy, it may look like wine, but it is in fact urine.)

I want someone to clean out this room. I have made a kind of tunnel to the computer, because the room is full of rubbish things that are useful, but not right now. I need to fit a double bed in here before Big Sis arrives, and I think that may cause an avalanche.

I could do it anyway, and leave a little sign outside the door, 'mothers-in-law this way.'

All suggestions greatly appreciated. Legal or not.

Getting Sufficient Sleep May Help Reduce Weight Gain:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/495410?src=mp

Dec. 7, 2004 —
....."Short sleep duration in young, healthy men is associated with decreased leptin levels, increased ghrelin levels, and increased hunger and appetite," the authors write. "Additional studies should examine the possible role of chronic sleep curtailment as a previously unrecognized risk factor for obesity."

....."If the findings prove to be reproducible and generalizable, and the hormonal changes of leptin and ghrelin due to sleep curtailment cause changes in food intake over time, we might add sleep duration to the environmental factors that are prevalent in our society and that contribute to weight gain and obesity," the authors write. "Although recommendations to get both a better night's sleep and more exercise might superficially seem to be at odds with each other from the perspective of energy expenditure and energy balance, these simple goals may well become a part of our future approach to combating obesity."

Ann Intern Med. 2004;141:846-850, 885-886

Kids Under Five Sleep Deprived

http://click.babycenter.com/b/?le=7zuX&me=xvOa&ce=yHz2A&t=0

About 12 to 15 hours of sleep is usually recommended for children ages 1 to 5, according to Christine Acebo, an assistant professor at Brown University Medical School.

But in her study of 169 children, she found they fell short of that goal.

"When we looked at the full 24 hours (including naps), the older kids got less than 9.5 hours," said Acebo, who's also assistant director of the Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Research Laboratory, in Providence, R.I. "The 1-year-olds and the 2-year-olds got 10-and-a-half to 11."

"It's less than usually recommended — 12 to 15 hours is pretty standard," she said.

I think I personally disprove the lack of sleep = fat theory.
Age 18 to 28:
average hours slept per night: 3
average weight: 8st 7lb

Age 28 to 36:
average hours slept per night: 11
average weight: 10st

Age 36 to present:
average hours slept per night: 7 now, but none at all for six weeks and about two hours a night for another 5 months.
average weight: erm, do I really have to answer that? Before thyroid probs or after? With clothes or without? Leaning forward and to the left on the scales or backwards and to the right? Is there time for a boob reduction before I step on those scales?

Pre-school education apparently makes children more successful in later life:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4516446.stm

Apparently 'success' is doing well in school tests and earning more money when you are an adult. I wonder why these definitions were chosen? There are happiness scales that could have been used (e.g. the Depression-Happiness Scale [McGreal & Joseph, 1993]) - I would personally see success as being more related to happiness than income. Or how often a person brightens another's day. Or what they contribute to society, other than tax.

Income is relevent to happiness mostly at the lower end of the income scale, where you are struggling to meet basic needs. Once those are met, is there any correlation between happiness and income? Statistically, in developed countries, happiness has not risen despite unprecedented increases in income. In the US, those in the top quarter of income are happier than those in the bottom quarter, but neither group was any more happy in 1998 than they were in 1974, despite their now-higher income.

It seems that the richest citizens of any country will be happier than the poorest, but that the actual income is irrelevent. It's where you are in comparison to others that counts - and what you have become used to.

I think there is also expectation at work here too. It seems like more and more nowadays, children are being told that it is having 'stuff' that counts. In fact, I'm far happier now than I was when we had lots more money. I actively resist getting new things, because it is such a waste to throw old things out - and originally I only thought of that from a financial point of view, but now it is far more about the huge wastage that happens as a result of the way our society works.

Then there's the things we lose while we are busy collecting our 'stuff'. Too busy on computers to be in touch with the seasons. Too busy in front of the telly to splash in the rain. Using a dishwasher instead of washing up watching the birds.

But then, the research was done by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, so their definition of success is pretty much a given, I suppose.

On TV there was a lot of discussion about what this meant for parents. I didn't get that at all - why would this information make any difference to a parent's decision to send their child to pre-school? Ben goes to 'playschool' because he likes it. If he didn't, he wouldn't.

Steven has gone home now - which has to be close to a Christmas miracle. Or a close-to-Christmas miracle. I got him some book about Bob Dylan - his favourite singer; which is pretty ironic really, as he now sounds like Bob Dylan when he sings, thanks to extensive facial surgery.

This year I've kept a record of all the books I've read and given them marks out of 100. It was mainly so that when the book groups I'm in ask me what was my best (new to me) book this year I would be able to give an answer, rather than humming and hawing and not being able to remember anything except 'The Gruffalo', like last year.

So this year the early leader was 'Secret Life of Bees' by Sue Monk Kidd, which was a bit girly and slightly didn't fulfill it's early promise, but was excellent nevertheless. Then in September David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' took over. I have a bit of a soft spot for science fiction, and this was kind of slightly more literary, slightly less paranoid Philip K Dick. Then this week I finished 'Line of Beauty' by Alan Hollinghurst, and that has to take the prize. It's kind of modern Evelyn Waugh or F Scott Fitzgerald - it has that same kind of hypnotic quality, the convincing world they put you in.

Best non-fiction was Karen Armstrong's 'Battle For God', which was excellent, and sadly didn't have much competition as I spent a lot of time reading rubbish about the Knights Templar and New Labour.

My Mum says she won't tell a lie. Now this was most annoying when I'd want her to get rid of one of my many admirers. I'd say, 'tell him I'm out'. But she wouldn't. 'I can't tell a lie,' she'd say. So rather than me being able to prepare a gentle brush-off speech to be delivered in privacy, the poor lads would end up being hastily rejected in front of my Little Sis, who would then broadcast the whole thing around school.

Little Sis, being cut from the same cloth as my Mum, would play along with this kind of thing. She'd go into the garden, so then my Mum would say, 'she's not in,' conscience clear. I refused to do it, because what's the point in obeying the letter, rather than the spirit of the law? To my mind, she was lying just as much for Little Sis as she would have been for me. This may be why I've never been the favourite child. Oh, but I'm forgetting, my Mum says she doesn't have favourites, and she doesn't lie, does she?

It thus also follows that being in prison is 'working away'; that getting baptised is 'joining a cult'; that having a psychotic breakdown and abandoning your children at Christmas is 'getting a bit upset'; and that arguing with Little Sis is 'being silly, she never means it, she's harmless.' That last is like saying a shark that's taken your arm off didn't really mean it. It probably didn't, but it still bloody hurts.

But how can anyone tell if they are lying to themself? I suppose by accepting that I am a liar, I'm trying to prevent myself from turning into my mother. Or is an attempt at justifying dishonesty a different sort of self-delusion?

I was over at the parents' house yesterday. Little Sis goes back to Germany on Sunday, so she was taking photographs on her new digital camera. On all of them I was weirdly starey-eyed and vacant looking. This means there are two possibilities. Either I look like that all the time, in which case I would imagine small children and dogs would run away whenever they saw me; or there is something about me which only cameras can detect. Like my soul has been removed in a voodoo ceremony or something (which apparently is what happened to Jim Morrison, and that's why people still see him, and why the grave is so small). Little Sis was entirely unsympathetic, 'just stop pulling that stupid face!'

I'm not really into this honesty business. It seems to be so rated - seems like every couple's goal is to 'be completely honest with eachother.' I don't get it. Seems to me like it's just asking for trouble.

Little Sis (she's 38, so she should know better) was out on the lash last night, and copped off with some hideous 80s throwback who managed to give her two hickies. Meanwhile, her husband is out risking his arse in Iraq. So she's wondering the best way to tell him. Er, *tell him*??! So we discuss it, and establish that yes, it was a huge and stupid mistake; no, she has not intention of ever seeing him again; no, it wouldn't be a sign of anything wrong with her marriage, more of her own insecurities as a fat bird (strangely I seem to have avoided these). So why did she want to tell him? 'Because I feel bad.'

Finally persuaded her it was better to not say anything and suffer her own pain as a punishment. The alternative is to upset husband for no other reason than to make her feel better.

Fidelity is a weird thing. I'd far rather find out that Husband had had a one-night stand that meant nothing than an unconsummated love affair. But he knows that if he ever did have a one night stand and told me, then I'd be far angrier than if I'd found out. If it is a sign that your marriage is going wrong, then sort that out, but I'm pretty sure that sometimes drunken things do just happen. So he should bear that guilt alone and not drag me into it.

My mum's neighbour is always saying how she never tells a lie, yet she fiddles her benefits. And then there are those people who 'call a spade a spade', which usually seems to be a euphemistic way of saying they don't care if they hurt others' feelings. My mum is weirdest of all, but I'm too late to tell about it. I'll write more tomorrow.

These are most of the current men I really shouldn't have the hots for, but do.

Michael Palin - too old, too nice
David Cameron - too Tory
Michael Heseltine - too old and too Tory
Alastair Campbell - too obvious, too rampantly male and too Tory
Jeremy Kyle - too perfect, too early to be watching TV.
Richard Madeley - too Richard Madeley
Jeremy Clarkson - he is so unstylish and revolting in every way, when you look at it in the cold light of day. But then Sunday evening comes along, and I think, 'hmmmmm, Top Gear'.

Then there is Gordon Ramsay; but that's completely understandable and normal. And Captain Kirk; but that's kind of a role-model thing too. There are probably others (I'm a bit of a slut), but I think that's enough to be going on with.

My husband thinks my dad must have been dodgy dealing all his life, since he managed to raise four kids on an income of around £7,000 a year. He wasn't, he was just incredibly careful. That none of us lost appendages to frostite is testament to the hardiness of 70s children.

He paid into a pension all his life. He now gets in total the same amount as if he hadn't bothered, because he gets per week just over the cut-off point for mension credit. I think it is (for a couple) £240. Whatever it is, he gets 25p more. Except that qualifying for pension credit enables you to get other benefits and reliefs. So he doesn't and they do.

So what do you think his advice is to his children about pensions?

When Ben was small, Hubby worked all hours so that I didn't have to. Unfortunately, this took him into the upper tax bracket. So we were penalised for having one parent at home full-time instead of both parents working bringing in the same amount of money. Married couples can no longer pass their unused tax allowances to their spouse either. But strangely, when you come to claim any benefits, it is family income that is taken into account. How is this fair?

Well I am back to my usual trivial and happy self today. Phoned Steven, and had a really stupid conversation because he can't speak properly since his cancer ops, and he couldn't hear me because his TV was on too loud and he couldn't reach the control.

Then Dad phoned. Now he has been driving me crazy for nine months telling me that he hasn't got diabetes at all (he was diagnosed a year ago), he was sure of it, and his medication was driving him mad and giving him bad legs. I, of course, treated this with the disdain it so richly deserved, especially since it came from a known hypochondriac. At one point, when I asked him about his previous health worry (which entailed endless trips to our long-suffering dentist) he admitted, 'this diabetes has hurt my legs so much I've forgotten to moan about my sore mouth'.

Anyway, he went off his diabetes medication, hasn't taken any for the last 10 weeks. And of course, he's 'too old' to modify his diet. He 'might as well be dead' as cut down his daily custard intake. Yesterday he had the results of his latest bloods, and his blood sugar is fine! He was only RIGHT all along!

Don't you hate it when parents do that?

So now he's lost all faith in tests. I really can't blame him. His legs are fine now too.

Two reasons at least.

Number one - bad haircut. Well, not particularly any worse than the old one, but bad in an entirely different way. Normally my hair is like something you find on the head of a person riding a broomstick, or standing looking at a hedge. Now, years after it should have happened, I have a 'Rachel' cut. I didn't ask for it, it just turned out that way. During the day it is fine, as I just look like any other mum. In the evenings it is pants. I look like Mary Tyler Moore has raided her Goth friend's wardrobe.

Number two - got trollied on Friday and was really nasty to a really nasty bloke. Him deserving it doesn't excuse my horribly bad behaviour. It was all part of what seemed to me doing a particularly nasty Anthony Blanche impersonation all night. The people I was out with are still laughing about it, but I can't find it funny, my conscience keeps on picking at me so I'm cringing all the time. I didn't even drink that much. Ugh!

Small Number Three - have been secretly letching over Alastair C every time hubby is out of the house. This wouldn't normally bother me in the slightest (how can anyone resist letching over those legs?), but now that my conscience is awoken, it won't give me a rest. I feel like Rik from the Young Ones. "No, I'm not listening, go away!"

Steven is now back on an ordinary ward, and like magic he has a bed sore. I think people have it in their heads that bed sores don't really matter, that they are these little sore things. They're not, they are great gapinf wounds that easily get infected and can go down as far as the bone. What's more, they shouldn't happen with correct nursing - I'd say around nine out of ten pressure sores sent to the Accident Hospital Burns Unit to be repaired by skin grafting were actually repaired by nothing more than correct nursing and nutrition. But how often does anyone get proper nursing nowadays?

On Sunday Steven's Partner phoned to say she was worried he was breathless, and had told the nurses three times in the last two hours, but no-one had done anything. While she was on the phone to me, a care assistant (not a nurse, a CARE ASSISTANT) came in and I could hear SP telling her about the breathlessness. This lassie went straight away to get the pulse oximeter: exactly what the qualified nurses should have done two hours before. You don't need qualifications to have common sense. This woman is twice the nurses the others are, and she hasn't a letter to her name and is probably on about half the pay.

SP has told the nurses not to bother washing Steven - his bedsore is on his bum and it was covered in shit after his last 'bath'. So now she's doing all his personal care.

And would it hurt staff to smile once in a while? Maybe this is a bit 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', but surely it's easier to do a job to the best of your ability than to waste so much energy being grumpy and avoiding work? The way I look at it, you get paid to do a job, and that includes all aspects of that job, like smiling, and getting on with people, and treating them like human beings.

I was just thinking about tattoos, and I thought, 'I wonder if Alastair Campbell has a tattoo?' If only he did, at least there would be one thing right with my crush that is so wrong.

He's on TV tonight, Five News at 7. I'll try not to get over-excited (I last saw on TV briefly on the morning of the Labour election victory), but I'll fail.

I should maybe make a New Year's Resolution to stop obsessing over Campbell. It is pointless, it annoys my husband, and it is demeaning to be in thrall to such an alpha male, especially one who likes Tony Blair and actively assisted in his dismantling of socialism within the Labour Party.

But he is very sexy. It's the 'Selfish Gene' thing isn't it? Should I really fight what is only a natural, primeval gene-driven thing? Plus, of course, he has no idea I exist and have pseudo-baby-making thoughts, so where's the harm?

So Steven is now officially well enough to have his own hospital phone: you can direct dial him for a mere 50p a minute. Yet another money-raising idea from a cash-strapped NHS:

http://society.guardian.co.uk/publicfinances/story/0,12671,1655580,00.html?gusrc=rss

I am a huge supporter of the NHS, I vowed never to leave it. Then after 15 years I left because it had morphed into a massive rest-home for terminally incapable managers, combined with an experimental playground for sound-bite seeking politicians.

With the medical advances that have come since its inception, there is no way the NHS can remain 'free'. Of course, it hasn't ever been 'free', and it isn't even free at the point of delivery, as everyone who's had to pay for a prescription or dental care will know.

It's not an insoluble problem though. Those who talk like it is are just not wanting to face up to the solutions, or are unwilling to look at them because their plans for privatisation will then be blown out the back door.

First off, we need to get rid of the internal market. This is a huge paper-generating exercise and achieves nothing except more jobs for people to track payments and monitor contract performance. It decreases the amount of time available for patient care, and increases the amount of money spent on computer systems which invariably turn out to be utter pants.

Performance targets should also be scrapped. What happens is that hospitals and GPs cheat by diverting funds to those areas where targets are set. Or they divert patients who might cause them to fail to achieve their targets. Instead, all hospitals, GP practices etc, should be sent up to date guidelines on best practice expected (in all areas), and then spot-checks should be performed, at any time, on anything. This would be cheaper to monitor (the checks should be experiential checks, not paper-based ones), would prevent 'cheating' and would give a truer picture of what is really going on in the NHS.

Private healthcare should be made to either take a full part in the training of staff, or should be invoiced for every staff member who goes to work for them. At the moment, unlike in the US, our private system is completely parasitic upon the NHS. It gets the benefit of trained staff without having to train them. It gets to do the money-spinning ops, then passes on the expensive stuff to the NHS. Anyone who has private health insurance should be aware that if they get a major head injury, they won't be spending their sixth month of rehab in a private hospital. Or their sixth week of ventilation, come to that.

Next we need to take the massive step of linking 'freeness' of treatment to payments into the system, probably done most easily on length of payments into National Insurance or tax.

Life-saving, tried and tested treatments would be available free to all, so that no-one contracting leukaemia, having an accident or so on would have anything to worry about. Everything else would be available free only if you had enough years of paying into the system. NICE could earn its keep by deciding appropriate sliding scales.

Some things should not be available on the NHS. Here I would include a range of things from expensive, non-cost-effective treatments for non-life-threatening conditions (such as infertility treatment); hugely expensive treatments such as Herceptin (even though it may save the lives of some women with breast cancer, the money would benefit more people by being spent elsewhere, and this would encourage the drug companies to lower their prices); some screening programmes, such as cervical screening, which costs £100,000 per life saved (this doesn't include the costs associated with the treatment of false positives), and breast screening; and some other preventative programmes such as untargeted asthma reviews.

I know that this would be highly controversial. No-one would be unaffected, and some of the poorest would be most affected. Then again, more money would be available for things like smoking cessation programmes (£2,293 per life saved), and this would benefit those groups.

I will add that I put my money where my mouth is on this one. I refuse my GP's regular asthma checks because I do not believe them to be useful for someone like me. I refuse cervical screening because I do not believe it to be cost-effective. When I believed I was infertile, I would not have considered fertility treatment on the NHS. When I became pregnant, I didn't visit the doctor until after 14 weeks, because until then if you are losing the baby, they can't do anything other than watch you anyway. [NB! I do not recommend this to other women - doctors and midwives are a mine of information on how to care for yourself and your baby in pregnancy. But this is another instance of one size not fitting all, and the need ot treat people as individuals]

Everyone is bound to try to hold onto the things that are relevent to them, but I think this is where education comes in. People should be told how much their treatment really costs, and what else that could pay for. For example, a year's treatment with Herceptin is the equivalent to 100 people relieved from pain and immobility by a hip replacement, and a year's treatment for 3000 people with hypothyroidism.

There would also be room for many more services to be available through the NHS using the type of insurance schemes used by dentists and the private sector already. This may stick in people's throats at first, but I no longer have any problem with paying £17 per month to cover my dental treatment. I compare my teeth to a Sky subscription. I know what I value more.